Search Engine News Blog - August 2002 Archives
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Search engine news web log for August 2002. For more recent search engine news, go to our Daily Search Engine News Blog. Webmasters
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Highlighted Headings = important entries >> = the point where a news item from our Search Light newsletter continues. >> = regular entries and commentary Now, on with the blog...
30 August 2002 >> Search Day reveals Why Search Engines Fail. According to two independent studies on this issue, a major reason they fail is because the majority of test searches are unsuccessful and because search engines force users to interact with their search tool in an unintuitive, precise way, requiring users to know *exactly* what they are looking for to begin with.
>> Volume 2 Issue #9 of The Search Light newsletter was distributed today, complete with a feature article about Rising Above the SEO Reputation. 29 August 2002 >> Hundreds of people are up in arms about the fact that the ihelpyouservices search forums are unreachable this morning. Well a few people anyway. Ok, well perhaps it's just me. But I am jumping up and down in protest - I gotta get my forum fix! But it's not as though I'm addicted or anything... honest.
LookSmart Drops Price, Partners With About.com According to an email received from them this morning, LookSmart.com have partnered with About.com and lowered the initial deposit for their Small Business Listings from USD150 to USD45. They wrongly believe this will spur me into activating my account with them and give them carte blanche over my credit card: >> "Our records indicate that you've already registered an account with LookSmart, but you currently don't have an active listing. Well, there's never been a better time to buy a Small Business Listing. Here's Why:" The price drop was apparently in response to customer feedback. Could they finally be listening to customers? Nah.. that's too far fetched. The same email boasts that LookSmart have partnered with About.com to enable Small Business Listings to get into the core search results on the About.com portal (which apparently receives 20 million unique users per month). This brings LookSmart's existing partner network to eight: About.com, MSN, Netscape, AltaVista, CNN.com, Road Runner, InfoSpace and Inktomi. No sign of a press release announcing this partnership from the Spin Doctors at LookSmart yet, but we wait with baited breath...
>> Those nice guys at Trellian have given me an evaluation copy of the SEO software tool BeOnTop (see blog coverage below) to review in my newsletter. Watch this space for a full review soon. 28 August 2002 >> The realization hit today that the sleazy reputation of the Search Engine Optimization industry has forced some of us SEO's to use ethics as a USP. How sad is that?
AOL Reveals Partnership With WorldCom As a result of an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), AOL Time Warner have revealed that they were a business partner of WorldCom, the company that was found guilty of $6 billion in accounting fraud and recently filed the world's biggest bankruptcy suit. >> Apparently AOL and WorldCom had conducted barter deals involving the trading of telecom services for advertisements on AOL. According to Forbes, "There's nothing wrong with such swaps in and of themselves. But when accounting for these noncash deals, companies sometimes inflate the value of the products and services that are exchanged, thereby inflating sales".
>> In a very interesting article with Avant|Marketer, iProspect CEO Frederick Marckini disputes the idea that Pay-Per-Click search engines will replace search engine optimization in the near future. He says: "Pay-per-click is advertising, SEO, like public relations, is editorial. Companies will continue to need both. Pay-per-click search is sure to become an integrated component of many SEO campaigns going forward. But, unless search engines become purely advertising driven, with all search results being sponsored, the two will stay separate and both will be needed." I couldn't agree more. However, in the same article, Mr Marckini makes this gross assumption: "Most SEO firms charge a fixed flat monthly fee, usually in the $12,500 to $25,000 per month arena". Yikes! By "most", I think he means "his". Even the Buyer's Guide to SEO Firms reveals that only around 2% of SEO firms surveyed charge those sort of prices.
>>
Finally, there could be proof that AltaVista is making a come-back, according
to this
forum thread. Seems AV is now indexing sites very quickly, even those
who don't use their paid inclusion service. Now if only they could deliver
traffic... 27 August 2002 FAST and Summus Partner for Wireless Search FAST Search & Transfer (FAST / All The Web) has announced an agreement with information architects Summus, Inc. to develop a multimedia search application for wireless phones. The application, developed by Summus utilizing FAST's technology platform, is designed to provide users with the ability to use their wireless phones to search the Internet for multimedia.
>> Funny how it never rains but it pours. I was just contemplating the fact that while our local client base is growing, we haven't had any new clients from the U.S. for a while, only to return to the office from the gym and be told we now have two! Now if I could just recover from my workout long enough to get started on them... *yawn*
>> Fellow search engine blogger and forum buddy Peter sidetracks me towards the Cluetrain Manifesto. Great, just what I need - yet another reason to procrastinate. 26 August 2002 Yahoo Substituting Google Content With Directory Results Yahoo has apparently begun to replace their Web Page Matches, traditionally fed by Google results, with their own Directory results. >> If you conduct a search on Yahoo for "optimization services" and look at the Web Page Matches, you'll see that some results are using the site titles and descriptions from Google (e.g. listing at position 4) but many others are using site titles and descriptions taken from Yahoo's own Directory (e.g. listing at position 3). Weird yes? Speculation is rife that this is evidence of a new partnership with Google and that Yahoo may soon combine all results and also display Google AdWords. Others think Yahoo results may soon appear on Google. Personally, I'm not buying into any hype at this point.
>> Today I received an unsolicited email asking me if I would consider placing a link on my site to a New Zealand tourism-related directory. Nothing wrong with that I hear you say. Well the email address it came from rang an alarm bell and when I checked my email archives I found several emails from the same "person" requesting links to their SEO site and also some posing as potential customers to solicit commercial-in-confidence information from me. Doing some more digging, I found hidden links on this directory site leading to a full blown link farm containing more and more sites each containing their own hidden links leading to the link farm and so on. What really annoys me about this is not the fact that each of these sites lead back to the SEO's own site, not the fact that this SEO is blatantly spamming the search engines, not the fact that this particular person has been an active member in the various search engine forums for months, claiming to be an ethical SEO, not the fact that he sent me spam email and not even the fact that this person has publicly denied using spamming methods when questioned directly. No, what really annoys me is the fact that this person has been sending out unsolicited email to innocent webmasters and asking them to link to a site that uses deceitful techniques to artificially inflate their link popularity. What happens when Google finds the hidden links and bans the site or imposes a ranking penalty? That's right, those innocent webmasters who kindly linked to the site suffer for linking to a bad neighbourhood via reduced PageRank or worse. Get with the program mate - I suggest you learn how to optimize web sites in a responsible manner or find a new career. 25 August 2002 >> Pandia reports that a well known portal developer SearchKing has begun to sell Google PageRank. Well not actually sell PR but sell text ads on pages with high PR. The higher the PR, the higher the ad costs. The idea of PageRank for sale has gotten some SEO's Knickers in a Twist. 23 August 2002 >> The backlash is developing rapidly over Overture's latest "enhancement" (see below). More and more Overture advertisers are starting to question the Match Driver™ tool and its ability to automatically bid on keywords on your behalf. The main issue now is the lack of transparent reporting - advertisers simply don't have the ability to see the extra keywords they are paying for, let alone how many clicks they resulted in. The bottom line here is that it's the advertiser's right to determine the relevancy of keywords in relation to their site if they are purchasing them. To have no control over the final search terms you are bidding on is bad enough, but how will you be able to determine the relevancy of those terms you've been forced to buy if Overture don't even reveal them? Given the recent calls for more responsible disclosure by search engines, I wonder what the FTC would make of this? In the current forum thread about this issue, fellow SEO nzbase raises another interesting point: "there's no way to prove/disprove that Overture haven't already been doing this as general policy from the start!" Now that's scary. 22 August 2002 >> After years of requests from site devotees, Search Engine Watch have finally launched their own affiliate program. The new program, which Danny Sullivan announced in today's Search Engine Update newsletter, provides affiliates with 10% commission on any SEW memberships that result from their referral links. Knowing how valuable a SEW membership is to any webmaster makes it easy to sell. I've already signed up - it should be a winner!
>> In the same newsletter, Danny reviewed www.google-watch.org, a new anti-Google site authored by Daniel Brandt, who claims "Google's monopoly, algorithms and privacy policies are undermining the Web". The site currently criticizes Google via two articles - one about Google's privacy policy and their use of cookies and the other about the undemocratic nature of Google's PageRank. Danny exposed factual flaws in the site's PageRank article, particularly the common misconception that PageRank is the most important factor in how Google scores pages. He also questioned Brandt's statement: "It's much more common for a low PageRank to completely bury a page that has perfect on-page relevance by every conceivable measure," stating that you often see pages with high PageRank ranking behind those with lower PageRank on Google. Danny does concur with Brandt's closing statement that linking patterns on the web have changed significantly thanks to Google. He makes the point: "Cross linking for purely promotional purposes has gone haywire, and as the obsession grows -- and the industrial attempts to build link popularity rise -- Google and all the crawlers will be under increasing pressure to add something new to their mix to keep search results useful". I think we've already seen this in action with the rush towards Paid Inclusion programs and text-based ads. Personally I think the next phase will be a move away from general crawls and towards direct feeds, putting the responsibility on the site owner to report changes to engines and not the other way around. Just wait and see... 21 August 2002 An email from Overture to advertisers has sent some shock waves around the SEO community today. Not content to disappoint us with their sneaky Auto-Bidding tool, now Overture calmly announce that their Match Driver™ tool will ensure your listings will appear for search terms you haven't even bid on! >> That's right - your ad will appear for searches that you haven't blatantly specified, meaning you will end up having to pay for clicks you didn't even want! In their email, the spin doctors from Overture worded it like this: "The new expanded matching enhancement allows you to receive traffic from more complex user search queries. This feature looks at your term, title and description to match your listings to searches where we believe the intent of the user is to find your product or service even though they have not typed in the exact keywords you've bid on". Makes me wonder if they borrowed LookSmart's PR team especially for the occasion. Search engine forums are already abuzz with talk of the so called "enhancement" and it's not pretty. I'll keep you posted on developments.
>> Saw on Pandia today that Australian software developers Trellian have just released a new SEO software tool called BeOnTop. According to Trellian, BeOnTop is a "statistical analysis and ranking tool which will help you analyze the top results from the major search engines". From what I've read so far, the USD95 BeOnTop appears to be a cross between Netscape's now defunct Web Site Garage and a very detailed version of WebPosition Gold's Page Critic feature. I've downloaded it and plan to don my reviewer's hat and pen an article soon...
Winners & Losers of Customer Satisfaction The University of Michigan has released their latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) measuring satisfaction of three of the most heavily used web services news sites, portals and search engines. News sites with a composite score of 73 beat portals and search engines which each achieved a composite score of 68. However, looking at
the individual search engine and portal scores reveals a clearer picture. Search
Day comments: "Google registers a score of 80 - more than 30%
better than Alta Vista (61) and Ask Jeeves (62). Satisfaction with portal
sites show a similar divergence, with Yahoo scoring 76 and Microsoft's MSN at
72, while AOL remains a laggard at 59". >> Some new additions for the workplace vocabulary arrived via email today. Those that raised a laugh included: BLAMESTORMING : Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles. PRAIRIE DOGGING : When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.According to
my niece, I am now officially a 20 August 2002 >> An article from ZDNet reminds us again about the FTC's warning to search engines and directories to better disclose their paid listings. Search engines that have already complied with the request include FAST/AllTheWeb, AOL's Netscape, MSN and AltaVista. Those promising to comply shortly include Teoma and LookSmart.
>> I finally received my 2 Google t-shirts via snail mail today! Black Hanes tees with multicolor Google logo and URL - very cool.
>> I am amused by a conversation my sister tells me she had with a web site designer at a recent exhibition. She told this designer of her sister (me) who runs a business specializing in Search Engine Optimization. The woman said "Yes, but what else does her company do - web design I presume?". When my sister told her there was no other aspect to the business, merely pure SEO, the woman said "But that's impossible. There's no way anyone could make a living from SEO alone". Wake up and smell the coffee sweetheart :-) 19 August 2002 >>
I came across a sad case today of a potential client whose prior SEO had used
every spamming trick in the book to try and achieve high rankings for them
without their knowledge. What a mess! They used hidden 1 pixel links,
invisible text, links to unrelated, high-ranking sites, duplicate content,
doorway pages - it was like a "How to Spam the Search Engines"
Guide. The result was thousands of dud pages pages banned by engines, a series
of ranking penalties and a domain given the dreaded Zero Page Rank penalty on
Google. Wasn't much I could do for them until they cleaned up their sites and
had the penalties lifted by asking the
An article on SFGate claims Inktomi are in serious financial muck following the revelation that they could not meet the terms of their building lease for their H.Q. in Foster City. Inktomi may be forced to buy the building because they have not been able to maintain a minimum level of profitability required by the "synthetic lease". The article also reveals Inktomi loaned its chief executive, David Peterschmidt $2.1 million in the second quarter of this year. Staff cuts, poor share performance, staff loans and now this? Could this be the beginning of the end for Ink?
>> I'm always amazed when I receive a request for a quotation from a company that is obviously trying to disguise itself as another company. For example, a competitor SEO posing as a potential client to try and solicit commercial-in- confidence information from us. Their intentions are crystal clear - particularly when they use a free email account like Hotmail or Yahoo when our form specifically instructs them not to. Nice try guys! 18 August 2002 >> What the heck am I doing working on a Sunday? I must really love this stuff. Today I've been reading some terrific research from Bryan Eisenberg and Jim Novo of Future Now about the importance of visitor conversion rates on web sites. These guys came up with one of the first calculators to measure web site ROI. They've put together an interesting document entitled The Marketer's Common Sense Guide to E-Metrics (a PDF for sale at USD99) which helps you use their free calculators in conjunction with your web site metrics to determine your own site's conversion rate and ROI. It also helps you measure the effectiveness of PPC search engine or banner ad campaigns. While I haven't had time to utilize the guide yet, I really got a lot out of their free report Increasing Conversion Rates One Step at a Time. A friendly warning - if you don't want to spend hours re-designing your site, DON'T read this report! Reading it made me realize that I have a heck of a lot of work to do to if I want my site to attract more customers.
According to Pandia, Inktomi has successfully played catch-up to Google and Fast by indexing over 2 billion documents. Could they be positioning themselves for a final-lap dash? Or could this be a desperate grab for market share? 16 August 2002 >> A fellow SES Sydney Conference attendee tells me he received not one but TWO black Google tees with a hand-written card from David Lee today. Maybe mine really IS in the mail? Suddenly, I Feel Shoppy. Inspired by a friend's office, I've now ordered my very own green Google Goes Global Exercise ball (makes a perfect office chair), a Google in the House Mousepad and a groovy Google's women's t-shirt (just in case).
>> I had a bit of a rant today over an article I found on Australia.Internet.com. Ok so the article was 2 months old, but I really hate it when journalists (and certain search engine staff) lump all SEO's into the same basket by describing us in terms of four letter words and describing what we do as "underhanded" and "beyond the black arts", I mean REALLY! No wonder SEO's have such a bad rep. You can see my rant in the comments section under the article. You can tell how mad I was - I pressed submit twice. 15 August 2002 >> Fellow moderators in the ihelpyou services search engine forums are doing their best to make me jealous today by describing in minute detail the fun they had at the Google Dance Party last night. Held at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley, there was a cool tour, free food, free booze and even dancing to techno music to be had. They rubbed elbows with Sergey Brin and Larry Page and even got a cool "Dancing Googlebot" t-shirt. Yes I'm jealous - can't you see me pouting?
>> I couldn't handle the t-shirt taunts anymore so I harassed Google staffer David Lee by email today. After helping to extricate him from the Google groupies tearing at his suit during the June Search Engine Strategies Conference in Sydney, David had promised me a Google t-shirt. His secretary swears it is "In The Mail" but I'm skeptical. (side note- If the shirt doesn't have a dancing Googlebot on it, I'm never using Google again *grin*). 14 August 2002 >> Those adorable spammers at TrafficMagnet are hard at it again, this time sending me 3 emails advising that - horror of horrors - I am not listed on SOME search engines! Oh My God! Not only that, but it seems that I have somehow acquired the site SEO Today - at least they referred to it as MY site in their colourful emails - thank you very much. Hmmm I wonder if this means Charlie Malouf is getting an email from them about this site? Thanks, but I think I'll turn down the opportunity to have "my" site submitted to 300,000 search engines every month. [Rumour has it that the laughable TrafficMagnet is in fact owned by an Australian SEO firm who recently had their wrists slapped by Google for spamming. Geez - you'd think they'd at least research their local competitors a little better].
>> A fellow SEO and I had an interesting phone discussion this evening about difficult clients and how to make them understand the importance of changing a web site to make it search engine compatible. It's interesting how often I come across this problem with clients - they assume you are not going to change the web site very much and get very over-protective when you show them the changes necessary to make their site spiderable. Either that or they balk at the costs to make the changes complaining "But I already paid $XXX for the site design!". I directed my SEO friend to Jill Whalen's excellent article: Letting Your Search Engine Optimization Expert Do Their Job. Sending that to sceptical clients usually does the trick.
Ah-Ha and InfoSpace Launch Paid Inclusion The PR Manager of InfoSpace sent me a heads-up today about a new Paid Inclusion program being launched between ah-ha.com and InfoSpace. >> In his email, Steve Stratz says "The relationship is focused on developing and delivering a Paid Inclusion program for merchants and Web site owners to promote their sites within meta-search results InfoSpace delivers to a number of Web search properties, including Excite, Dogpile, NBCi, Verizon Online, WebCrawler, MetaCrawler and InfoSpace, among others. The program is set to launch within the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted". And I'll keep you guys posted. Meanwhile you can read the official Press Release on the announcement made at the Search Engine Strategies Conference, San Jose. 13 August 2002 >>
Today's issue of Search
Day takes an in-depth look at the technology behind Google. There's an
interview with Jim Reese, Google's Chief Operations Engineer and a very cool MP3
Audiocast to boot.
Lycos To Launch Pay Per Click Program Today Lycos announced they will be launching a new keyword-based advertising program at the end of the month. Called InSite AdBuyer, the new program will allow advertisers to create text-based ad panels (likely to be similar to Google AdWords) for display on Lycos Search and HotBot. >> Lycos has teamed up with FindWhat, who will supply the bidding technology. FindWhat's involvement is significant as this would be the first time they've has secured a deal to provide results to a major search engine since Excite went bust. The program will not replace Overture paid listings already displayed on Lycos sites.
>> The Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose California starts today (12th August in PST, U.S.A.). Three days of networking, drinking and playing catch-up with the industry *sigh* - wish I was there. 12 August 2002 >> Yet another misleading article about what search engines want was released today. I am so sick of these so called search engine "experts" touting their rubbish all around the web. This one states: "Search engines do not like frames so don't use them or put in the <no frames> tag". What a misleading sentence! Search engines can index frames-based sites as long as care is taken with the content of the No Frames tag and the use of javascript orphan control to ensure visitors don't become "frame-trapped". No mention of this OR how to create a search engine friendly No Frames tag in the article. It then goes on to say "you might even want to create short pages for one keyword and a longer 500 or more word page for another keyword thus satisfying all the major search engine's requirements". What a load of bollocks! Trying to meet the requirements of all search engines is impossible. You should just try to maintain a minimum of 250 words on each page and let your content dictate the length, using your target keywords throughout the copy in a relevant, easy to read way. As long as your site content is relevant, you'll attract visitors and search engine rankings naturally. There is absolutely no need to obsess like this. 11 August 2002 >> In the latest Market Position newsletter released today, Brent Winters of FirstPlace Software quotes from my WebPosition Gold 2 Review and includes a link to it.
>> In the same newsletter, the importance of having a link from About.com to your site is mentioned. Seems it is weighted heavily on Google in terms of link popularity so a well-researched submission to the right category editor is vital. *Sigh* yet another thing to add to my "To Do" list. 10 August 2002 New Technology To Update Search Engines Jan Otto Reberg from Wide Computing emailed today, to let me know of a new technology her company will be launching at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose next week. Known as LinkLoader, the technology "distributes an agent to run on or near each web server, monitoring web sites for new, changed and deleted pages. LinkLoader will then notify search engines, so they can efficiently pinpoint and quickly download exactly what they need in order to stay synchronised with web content". So basically LinkLoader acts as a scout, monitoring changes and additions to your web site and distributing those changes to search engines without the need for the engine to re-spider your entire site. This not only reduces bandwidth and server load for the engines, but gives them access to more web content than ever before. Now I don't know much about distributed agent technology, but if this thing takes off I suspect it could have a huge impact on the search industry and the traditional role of the SEO. What I'm particularly concerned about is whether the program prevents spiders from accessing your site. Meanwhile, the technology is free to download and install on your own site, so I'll give it a go and report the results soon. 9 August 2002 >> Today ineedhits sent me an email to let me know that Ask Jeeves and ineedhits.com are currently experiencing some technical difficulties with the transfer of inclusion report data in the Paid Inclusion program. Well no kidding! This is just the latest in a string of problems the Ask Jeeves inclusion program seems to be suffering. Perhaps it's time for Jeeves to show ineedhits the door to the manor? 8 August 2002 >> The latest issue of The Dom Factor arrived in my email today and the Editor revealed it is published by a reputable SEO company. This is quite interesting, because judging by the content, I'd always assumed it was produced by a bitter, homophobic, sexist ex-advertising exec with a chip on his shoulder the size of Mt Everest.
Google Results on New York Times According to Pandia, Google results now appear on the New York Times web site. Now when a visitor searches the New York Times, Google's search results and Adwords text ads appear below current and archived article result links, under the heading Web Search Results. 7 August 2002 >> Not much happening in the search engine space today. Will have a dig around the forums...
>> A new article from Robin Nobles made me feel guilty by reminding me of the importance of having a search engine on your site to help visitors find what they are looking for. (No I haven't put one on this site - yet!). She suggests using FreeFind. Looks quite good - the free version incorporates ads in the results but you can upgrade to the ad-free professional version from USD19 per year. 6 August 2002 >> Search engine expert Chris Ridings announced today in his SEO Support Forums that he is building a search engine. He says who better to build the perfect search engine than an SEO who spends their days studying them? You have to admit, he's got a point. He's already developed a spider (affectionately called "Trundle") that is out gathering code as we speak. If you've got any tips for Chris about what features you'd like in a new search engine, leave comments on his site. 5 August 2002 >> Well here's a turn-up for the books, LookSmart actually asking for feedback BEFORE they launch something (just kidding Damian!). Actually, LookSmart Australia contacted me this evening to get some feedback on their new site describing their LookListings and LookListings Small Business Products. I don't know about you, but these similar product names have always confused me. On first glance, the newly designed pages go some way towards distinguishing the products and highlighting the advantages of each. LookListings is their pay per click model for larger businesses (top 3 positions on looksmart.com.au and partner sites) while LookListings Small Biz is actually their old Express Submit product consisting of inclusion in the directory and appearance in the remaining search positions (with ranking presumably based on the LookSmart algorithm). I'll get back to you when I've studied the site in more detail.
>> Getting all sorts of nice feedback today from the new newsletter layout. The program I used to create it (see below) enables me to check which of my subscribers have opened the newsletter and who clicked on what link within it - very revealing! Nice to know some of my major competitors keep tabs on what I'm doing - hi guys! LOL.
A representative from Inktomi has started frequenting the various search engine forums (or at least de-cloaking) and offering to answer reader questions. A question I posed about their recent staff cuts was answered within about an hour of posting. This is encouraging and seems to stem from Inktomi's new corporate focus since purchasing Quiver (see below). For the latest forum threads involving Inkomi, see: More : ihelpyouservices
Forums 4 August 2002 We are very excited today because we've given The Search Light newsletter a face lift and re-launched in a shiny new HTML layout. The format has changed too, it will now go out every couple of weeks and contain only a summary of each news item, with links to the full story here on our Blog pages.
>> After my problems with McAfee VirusScan lately, my fellow moderators in the ihelpyouservices search engine forums steered me towards AVG Free Anti Virus Software today. So far so good - easy to install and updates are free too. Nice!
Today we officially launched our Search Engine News Blog. Because of the sheer quantity and regularity of search engine news that comes across my desk each day, I decided that a monthly newsletter can no longer keep up. So I've moved it to an online WebLog format, which is updated every day or so. I've also created a Blog history for July, to make things more interesting. 3 August 2002 >> The people at Aesop.com tell me there is a new graphic standard that has just been released: MPZ format. Apparently the new standard is already browser compliant and can compress a 10MB photo to a file size of just 100KB with very little loss in quality. 2 August 2002 >> Today I discovered Constant Contact - what a fantastic product! It's an email marketing program. I used it to create our new HTML newsletter and it now manages our subscription list. Was so impressed I signed up to become an affiliate. 1 August 2002 Lloyds and Google Forge Advertising Deal According to ZDNET (story here) Google has struck a deal with Lloyds of London to promote the insurer's portal www.insurance.co.uk in a massive online advertising campaign worth around one million pounds. Lloyd's are using Google's sponsored matches program AdWords to promote their site whenever Google users type in a search for 1,000 different insurance related keywords. Seems like nothing can stop Google at this point. Are they becoming the Microsoft of the Internet? Blog Archives August 2002 Click
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